“How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business” with Jason Morjaria CEO of Commusoft

As part of my series of interviews about “How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Morjaria. Jason is the founder and CEO of Commusoft, a leading provider of job management software for the field service industry in the UK. With over 1200 clients and 10.000 individual users, Commusoft has recently experienced a tremendous expansion, releasing the US and United Arab Emirates (UAE) versions of their successful formula for managing field service companies. Jason has thrived as an entrepreneur and business advisor, seamlessly coordinating Commusoft’s three offices in London, Chennai, and Montreal, with a soon to be opened fourth in Chicago.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I definitely knew I had an entrepreneurial streak since I decided to major in Business and Politics but I never anticipated that the road to getting here would be so different from what I envisioned in the beginning. The story behind Commusoft starts off as the usual software story does: during college, I’d dabble in coding then spend most of my free time trying to design software that I thought were missing from the market or that I found interesting. I was never an expert at it by any means but I did have the technical insight to understand the scope of what I was creating.

When a friend asked me to sell him the scheduling software I had designed, that entrepreneurial streak told me that if he wants to buy it, then others might as well. Fast forward to my placement year (which is what UK colleges call an internship year), I proposed to my counsellor that I would intern for my own company. They were a bit on the fence about it but I let them know that it’s either that or I drop out — their choice. When they went with the former, I became certain that I had something going on. During that year, Commusoft — which wasn’t even Commusoft but Communication Software — acquired 14 clients. This doesn’t seem like much now but it meant the world to me back then.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

The most interesting and the most challenging was releasing what we call Commusoft V4 — which stands for version 4, whereas what I had created in my dorm room was V1. V2 was an inter-phase but V3 was a complete product that our clients used and enjoyed. What most software companies do in this situation — when they realize that they want to tackle bigger fish without some fundamental changes to a product people like — is that they chip away at the structure. They slowly introduce changes and hope that no one notices or resists. I had another one of those entrepreneurial hunches telling me that V3 just wouldn’t be able to support the kind of vision that I had for the company so I sat down with my long-time CTO, Raja, and we agreed that V4 would be a completely new product. It took us a year and an immense effort to convince our old clients to migrate from V3 to V4 but in hindsight, this was the best decision. We even made a video about it. That sit-down with Raja was a turning point in my career and I credit it with Commusoft’s success.

For me it’s fascinating how a seemingly mundane moment like a meeting could be a keystone event in a company’s life so no other experience or story will ever come close to it as far as impact goes. Not many software companies take this risk and it’s important for any business leader to know when his product has reached its peak potential because unless they make changes, from there on the only way is down.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I mentioned it before but not long after I stopped interning for myself and found some motivated people to build Commusoft with — people who are still building it with me to this day — every client was a matter of life or death. I’ve since learned the importance of saying no and this story is probably the root of it. This was before Android devices even existed — ancient times, really — and we had a client saying that he will sign with us only if we create a version of the software that would work on a Palm PDA — notorious devices with horrible software design. Then he asked us if we can do it in three weeks and I looked him in the eye and, from the bottom of my heart, I said yes. It’s incredibly funny when I look back but it wasn’t at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I believed 100% that we could get it done. If sheer power of will could spontaneously materialize lines of code, it would have done it then and there. Three weeks later, cue in the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had with a client. In the end, they understood and gave us an extension. We delivered the project and they’re still a Commusoft client today so all’s well but, looking back, I just find my own eagerness to be incredibly funny. Needless to say, I’m a lot more tempered these days.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

To be perfectly honest, we only properly started social media a year ago and before that it was a lot of trial and error. Mostly error but I’m grateful for it because nowadays social media is a big driver in our lead capture strategy. We started by dabbling in Twitter and some basic Facebook ads but we didn’t have an actual plan so, obviously, we didn’t see any results.Then we hired an external person to take care of this for us but that didn’t go very well either as they didn’t understand our company culture nor our industry. We still do use Facebook and Twitter mostly to interact with existing customers and stay up-to-date as well as cement our credibility as an industry thought leader. However, the best results I’ve seen by far come from LinkedIn which we’ve been engaging with for a longer period of time. That’s where quality content really matters and, as a B2B company, it’s simply where our audience is. A small business owner might be active on Facebook, but the kind of companies we want to target will never discuss a serious matter over Twitter. They will, however, interact with you, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, on LinkedIn.

Let’s talk about LinkedIn specifically, now. Can you share 5 ways to leverage LinkedIn to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Get yourself a content distribution strategy. And by this I mean acknowledge the power that your content has and understand that your company is not a sole entity but it’s made out of the people behind it. People buy from people not from corporate entities. In our case, we have Sales and Client Services teams who spend most of their day interacting with clients. It makes a world of difference if the person you’ve been chatting to for the past weeks adds you on LinkedIn. They will post content that is relevant to you and if you need another product or an update, they can recommend solutions because they understand your context. You might say “But how can I trust so many people to post on behalf of the company on their personal accounts?” to which I would answer “Then you’ve got bigger issues to fix than social media.”
2. This follows the same thought process but my second advice is to act like a human. Use your company account to distribute content — your own or sharing others’ — but make the most out of your personal account as well. Comment on posts, offer advice when requested, and recommend when necessary. Your team can then follow your lead.
3. Don’t fall for vanity metrics. Especially not on LinkedIn where likes and comments carry different meaning than on Facebook or other platforms. Since it’s not personal interest based but professional, one single earnest comment from an expert can offer your post visibility and place it in front of a whole network of people working in the same industry which are much likelier to become clients than your third cousin’s friend on Facebook.
4. Your product comes second to thoughtful, honest advice. Now, I’m not saying to go around recommending competitors but it’s worth keeping in mind that this is not always an opportunity to plug you product. If someone asks me for a job management software, I’ll be the first to say Commusoft but if they’re looking for you to recommend them an accountant, “I’ve got just the scheduling tool for you” is not the right answer.
5. Create a community around you and your company. This is truly easier said than done and we are not quite there yet either but it’s important to set it as a goal. Identify your niche and connect to people who are familiar with it then co-create. My last project in this respect was a “tour” where LinkedIn followers could submit their business’ location for me to visit and sit down for a friendly chat with them on where the field service industry is heading and what can they do to grow their company. The response was quite overwhelming. We received a lot of comments and messages for people who were not in this industry but who wanted to implement a similar strategy.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It probably wouldn’t have anything to do with companies and strategies. Business is done by people so it’s people that you have to inspire. This might be a personal thing and it’s by no means unusual, but lately I’ve become more aware of how much the media is pushing certain extremes of cultural movements which might grate on some people. I’ve become interested in environmentalism and the issues that affect our surroundings, especially conspicuous consumption and waste, so I’ve taken the decision to consume less and of a higher quality. Now, I would like to inspire people to follow my example but I would never drill it into them as the only right way to do things. It’s always about taking small steps towards improving yourself and showing empathy rather than arrogance. Lead by example.

As a company, we saw this when we were getting ready to ship our first physical product — truck tracking devices. We came up with this beautiful packaging, an origami style box. Then we realized that box needed to go in another box to protect it. Moreso, a few different sizes of boxes would be necessary since the number of trackers we sent to each client would be different. We took a step back and looked at what we were doing then realized how much unnecessary waste we were creating. Not to mention, this was all thanks to our good intentions and the idea that we wanted to ship something beautiful to our clients not just useful. Eventually, we went with high-durability recyclable envelopes which are still aesthetically pleasing but more environmentally friendly. I sleep much better at night thanks to this decision.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Jason Fried from Basecamp, definitely. His books are amazing so I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sit down and have a chat with him. I want to ask him specifically how he managed to take Basecamp global in the absence of external investors. Similarly, Commusoft was built by bootstrapping and it grew organically so we never sought external capital. The technology side of it is easy — the software is global but the deployment itself demands careful thought. I’d like to know if he started working with freelancers in new locations or if he simply went all in and opened new offices. What were the hurdles he came across when Basecamp became an international entity? I’d like to share stories with him about overcoming these and encourage other companies to aim high. I wonder if he would accept a LinkedIn invitation.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!